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When Will My Computer Understand Me?

Posted by timothy on from the it-already-does dept.

aarondubrow writes "For more than 50 years, linguists and computer scientists have tried to get computers to understand human language by programming semantics as software, with mixed results. Enabled by supercomputers at the Texas Advanced Computing Center, University of Texas researchers are using new methods to more accurately represent language so computers can interpret it. Recently, they were awarded a grant from DARPA to combine distributional representation of word meanings with Markov logic networks to better capture the human understanding of language."

16 of 143 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Why? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Funny

    Actually, that would be considerably easier and cheaper to implement.

  2. Maybe.. by houbou · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Instead of trying to build computers that can understand us, we should be building computers that can learn based on stimuli. If a computer can somehow see, and hear, at the very least and it could somehow capture this information and then over time, develop algorithms to make sense of these things. You know.. the code it would generate could then be used ... Anyways, sounds crazy, but, to me, it makes more sense that way. After all, we didn't just 'communicate' instantly, we learned over time.

    1. Re:Maybe.. by iggymanz · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I've watched the AI folk fart around with those things for over 25 years; they've nothing to show.

      Even my preferred hobby of symbolic AI has gotten mostly nowhere in the last 30 years.

      Let's just make certain animals smarter and call it a day. what could go wrong?

  3. Voice is a crappy input mechanism by alen · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It was on Star Trek only because tv and movies are dialogue driven media. But in reality voice limits input

    Take the Siri sports example
    Ask for your team scores
    Get scores
    Open app for detailed sports news

    Or just open the app and get the scores and news in one step. Same with any other data. Modern GUI's can present a lot more data faster than using voice to ask for the data

    1. Re:Voice is a crappy input mechanism by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Interesting

      But let's say, um, hypothetically and all, that a... ah... friend happened to have recordings of a few hundred million people's phone calls and needed a giant computer to be able to interpret them....

    2. Re:Voice is a crappy input mechanism by R3d+M3rcury · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Of course, that depends on what's going on.

      (While wearing my bluetooth headset and working on my car)
      "Siri, How'd the Patriots do?"
      "They beat the Jets 52-10."
      "Woohoo!"

      Or stop working on my car, dig for my cellphone and either launch an app for sports scores (which I have to have on my phone) or launch Safari and search (ie, type) "Patriots Jets" and hope that Google is clever enough to figure out what I want and will put it on the search results.

      I agree that if I want to know the details of the game--number of butt fumbles, interceptions, and what-not--I'm going for the App. But just to get quick answers, voice is far more convenient.

    3. Re:Voice is a crappy input mechanism by The+Good+Reverend · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Totally depends what you're doing. I can tell Siri "Remind me to call my mom when I get home", and she does it. If I were to input this without voice, It would require me to open up menus to the reminder app, tell the system who I'd like to call, that I'd like a location-based reminder, and what that location is (though I'm not sure iOS can do this without Siri). Even if there were a macro for it, it wouldn't be any faster than asking Siri outright by voice.

      There are absolutely things that are easier to do by hand, but voice certainly has advantages.

    4. Re:Voice is a crappy input mechanism by swillden · · Score: 5, Insightful

      But in reality voice limits input

      Only if you have to talk to it like you're giving input to a computer.

      Imagine instead that you're talking to a person, and not just any person, but a person who has the world's knowledge at his fingertips and knows you as well as a highly competent personal assistant. Rather than asking for your team scores, you'd say "Giants?" and you'd get back the most interesting points (to you) about the game. Follow that with "anything else?" and you'd get a rundown on the rest of the sports, focusing on the parts that most interest you.

      Voice input with contextual awareness, understanding of the world, and personalization will blow away anything else in terms of input speed, accuracy and effectiveness.

      Modern GUI's can present a lot more data faster than using voice to ask for the data

      You're conflating two issues here. One is input, the other is output. Nothing is likely to ever be as efficient as voice for input. I'm a pretty fast typist and not a particularly fast speaker, but I talk a lot faster than I type, even on a nice full-sized keyboard. Output is a different issue. Text and imagery has much higher information bandwidth than voice. However, you can't always look at a screen, so being able to use voice output at those times is still very valuable.

      Even now, I find my phone's voice input features to be extremely useful. Earlier today I was a little late picking up my son from karate. While driving, I told my phone "call origin martial arts". Now, I don't have an address book entry for Origin, in fact I've never called them before. But my phone googled it, determining that the intended "Origin Martial Arts" is the one near my home, and dialed the phone number for me. That's just the most recent example, but I use voice queries with my phone a half-dozen times per day because it's faster and easier than typing or because I'm doing something that doesn't permit me to manipulate the phone a lot.

      Voice is the ultimate input mechanism for most humans. Right now it's pretty good (especially if you use Google's version of it; Siri is kind of lame), and it's going to get much, much better.

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
  4. Your computer will understand you... by msobkow · · Score: 5, Funny

    ... as soon as men understand women.

    --
    I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
  5. Backwards to the Future by Colonel+Korn · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm struck by how much more accurate and responsive Dragon Naturally Speaking was in 1999 on my Pentium 2 than is Siri on my iPhone 5 and Apple's cloud servers today. Maybe it's a microphone problem, but in that case why was the $4.99 tiny microphone from Radioshack in 1999 better than the microphone in my iPhone 5 today?

    --
    "I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
  6. When you start making sense by Kjella · · Score: 3, Funny

    Other people don't understand WTF you're talking about either, they're just better at faking it.

    --
    Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  7. Language does not exist in a vaccuum by mugnyte · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Each time I've researched NLP solutions, the full sensory experience is ultimately found to play a role in full context and meaning. This begins in a very tight locale, and expands outward, or hopping around locations/time as part of context.

    Instead, when most solutions attempt to pick a "general corpus" of a language, they pick such a general version of the language that contextual associations are difficult to follow for any conversation. Even the most ubiquitous vocabulary, such as in national broadcast news, there are assumptions that point all the way back to simplistic models of our experiences via sight/hearing, taste/smell, touch/movement and planning/expectation. Even in our best attempts, nothing such as metaphor or allusion is followed well, and only the most robotic - formal - language understood. This interaction is certainly nothing "natural".

    I don't believe NLP problems will be (as easily) solved until we begin to solve the "general stimulus" for input, storage, searching and recall across the senses that humans have - their true "natural" habitat that language is describing. So that when apple goes from "round" to "red" to "about 4in" to "computer" to "beatles" to "not yet in season here" to "sometimes bitter" to "my favorite of grandma's pies", etc - and onward, like potential quantum states until the rest of the conversation collapses most of them - we may be able to get a computer to really understand natural language. This isn't possible in just the manipulation of pieces of text and pointers.

  8. When will it understand you? by Culture20 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    When computer scientist guys understand what it means to understand. Go read some epistemology books. You'll understand.

  9. I can answer that, Alex! by Okian+Warrior · · Score: 3, Insightful

    When will your computer understand you? Not for awhile.

    Speech recognition is a part of AI, to the extent that the computer understands what you're saying. Sure, programs like SIRI or ELIZA can put words together, but only so long as we can anticipate the form and context of the question. SIRI only knows about the things it has been programmed to do, which is (unfortunately) not nearly the amount we expect an intelligence to do.

    AI has languished for about 60 years now, mostly because it is not a science. There is no formal definition of intelligence, and no roadmap for what to study. As a result, the field studies everything-and-the-kitchen-sink and says: "this is AI!".

    Contrast with, for example, Complexity: a straightforward definition drives a rich field of study, producing many interesting results.

    In this particular misguided example, they are using Markov logic networks, even though the human brain does not make the Markov assumption(*). We have no definition for intelligence, and the model they work on is demonstrably different from the only real-world example we know of. This may be interesting mathematical research, but it isn't about AI.

    Not to worry - most AI research isn't really related to AI.

    This is why your computer doesn't understand you, and won't for quite some time.

    (*) Check out Priming and note that psychologists have measured priming effects three days (!) after the initial stimulus.

    1. Re:I can answer that, Alex! by narcc · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Yes, computationalism is long dead. Now, can we stop using the term AI? Keeping the term around serves only to further confuse the general public and decision-makers both public and private. I'd go as far as to say that the continued misuse of the term is precisely what has kept the cranks and con artists in business!

      --
      Required reading for internet skeptics
  10. Re:Yes! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Sure, because

    Computer, insert line... int line counter plus equals copy to tables bracket tables dot primary, comma tables uh, arrow thingy... last... comma sequelconne... no no, not that, erase last... ess que ell connection comma date helper bracket current date time bracket brack... uh, close bracket comma get cutoff bracket close bracket close bracket, semicolon.

    Sounds so much easier than a keyboard and autocomplete.